For some, social selling has become synonymous with LinkedIn. Sales and marketing leaders have come to believe that LinkedIn is the only relevant network for B2B social selling. And that’s problematic.

To be sure, LinkedIn is an essential part of any social selling strategy, given that LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional social network. But LinkedIn is not a seller’s only option. Sellers should be active where their buyers are. And in a B2B context, many buyers use Twitter.

In fact, Twitter has several social selling advantages that LinkedIn does not have. Let’s take a look at a few of them…

1. It’s Easier to Connect with Buyers on Twitter

To see someone’s updates on LinkedIn, you have to jump through hoops. You know the drill. First, you have to write a connection request message. Then, you have to wait until the person logs on to the network. Then, you have to pray that your request does not get lost among all the other LinkedIn requests that the person has received. Then, you have to pray that the person accepts your request. And then, you can finally see the person’s updates in your LinkedIn feed.

Twitter, on the other hand, removes the hoops. (Cumbersome connection requests, be gone!) With Twitter, you simply find someone and click the “Follow” button. Presto! Their updates will appear in your Twitter feed.

Heck, you don’t even need to follow someone to know what’s on his or her mind. Once you locate your prospect on Twitter, you can begin to form a portrait of your buyer because you can see his or her previous tweets.

2. Twitter Gives You a Well-Rounded Portrait of the Person

Since LinkedIn is the professional network of choice, we often project a one-sided image of ourselves. That is, we tend to portray ourselves as buttoned-up professionals when we use LinkedIn.

Twitter doesn’t have the same professional expectations, and as such, we don’t have the same reservations about showing multiple sides of our personalities. Twitter is the virtual water cooler where people gather to discuss industry news, their hobbies, their daily musings, and pop culture.

Take, for instance, this tweet from Trapit’s CEO:

On LinkedIn, an article about Mr. Robot would seem misplaced, but on Twitter, it’s appropriate. And if you were trying to develop a business relationship with Trapit’s CEO, it’s helpful to know that Henry likes Mr. Robot. That knowledge is good for building rapport – both online and offline. For example, you could respond to his tweet and start a conversation, or you could casually drop a reference to Mr. Robot during a sales call.

3. Twitter Makes It Easy to Find Relevant Conversations

Twitter has a built-in conversation finder. It’s called the hashtag. While adolescents and comedians might enjoy general hashtags like #yolo (You Only Live Once), professionals have their own set of hashtags. For instance, every day, there are countless tweets about #SocialSelling.

Twitter users include hashtags in their tweets because they want their posts to be discovered by others. (And since Twitter is an open network, other people can easily discover those musings.) So, take the time to investigate relevant hashtags for your industry.

Once you find the right hastags, use them in your tweets so that like-minded people can find you. And don’t be afraid to jump into conversations and start discussing ideas with others. In the process, you can establish yourself as a thought leader and build your professional network.

Here are some hashtags that you can try:

4. Twitter Users Log in More Frequently

For social selling to work, your buyers need to have accounts on social networks, and they need to be active on those accounts. Otherwise, engagement won’t happen.

Pew’s research suggests that you’ll have an easier time of reaching your buyers on Twitter – compared to your buyers on LinkedIn. Why is that? Twitter users tend to log in more frequently than LinkedIn users, making it more likely that they will see your tweets.

5. Twitter Users Are Looking to Learn about Their World

We’ve created a false binary about social media. The binary suggest that there’s LinkedIn (where people want to learn and grow); then there’s every other social network (where people presumably don’t care about learning and just want to have a good time).

This binary couldn’t be further from the truth. Twitter users, for instance, are actively trying to make sense of their world. 81% of Twitterers use the network to keep up with the news on a daily basis.

If you’re a savvy salesperson, a lightbulb just turned on. You’re thinking, People want the news? I can give them news! On Twitter, you can become a go-to resource for your buyers by tweeting about industry news and supplying thought leadership content.

In so doing, you will build rapport with buyers and increase their social networks. Purveying informational content, after all, is one of the best ways to expand your reach on Twitter.

In Short…

It’s foolish to think that you can engage all of your buyers on Twitter. At the same time, it’s foolish to think that all of your buyers will be on LinkedIn.

A good social selling program will span across networks. It will teach sellers best practices for each network. And it will set KPIs that are appropriate for each network.

Whatever you do, don’t get caught up in the mentality that LinkedIn is the sole network for social selling.

Want More Great Tips?

Check out the Executive Guide to Social Selling Success and learn how to align your sales, marketing, and sales enablement teams.

The B2B sales world is obsessed with closing deals. Just think about how many times you’ve heard the Glengarry Glen Ross line “Coffee is for closers” or watched your colleagues throw dollar bills at someone who closed a deal or read a job description that talks about being a good closer.

To be sure, there’s a reason why we fixate on the end of the sales process. Closing deals is how a company makes money, and it’s the basis for a sales rep’s compensation. That said, we can’t overlook the importance of opening in today’s sales environment. In fact, starting a conversation is one of the hardest parts of the sales process today. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the research.

Buyers: “Leave Me Alone!”

Your future customers are actively avoiding your sales organization. Here’s what Forrester’s research says:

In 2015, 53% of respondents found that gathering information on their own was superior to interacting with sales reps. Over the course of a year, that number grew by 11 percentage points! In 2016, 64% of respondents preferred self-education to interacting with sales reps.

In other words, it’s getting harder and harder to engage your buyers. In part, that’s because buyers have access to more information than ever before. But it’s also because sales professionals aren’t giving buyers what they need, when they need it.

Many buyers aren’t ready to buy, but many reps are ready to close. So, instead of helping buyers explore the different ways they can solve their business problems, the reps pitch their products and try to pressure buyers into signing a contract.

That’s the wrong approach. To be effective in a marketplace where buyers actively avoid sellers, sellers need to ask different questions. Rather than ask, “How can I close this customer?” they need to ask, “How can I open a conversation with this person? What can I do to spark engagement with buyers?”

Which brings us to more research…

Sellers: “How Do I Open a Dialogue with Buyers?”

Take a look at this chart:

The average buying committee has 6.8 stakeholders. When so many people are involved, it’s hard to build consensus among the key stakeholders, especially when it comes to defining a problem and deciding how to solve that problem. In fact, choosing a vendor is the easiest part of the purchasing process.

And therein lies the rub. Eager to close, some sales reps assume that all buyers are ready to choose a vendor. If they just see my product, they will buy it, such salespeople think to themselves. In so doing, they skip over entire stages of the buying process (e.g. determining how to solve a business problem).

Other reps shy away from engaging buyers in the early stages of the purchasing process, when potential customers are putting words to their problems and exploring ways to solve their problems. But that’s when sales reps should start opening the conversation. That’s when buyers need the most help. That’s when sales reps can start to build a relationship and add the most value.

Bottom line: Your opening must match the buyer’s current stage, and if you wait until the “vendor selection” phase, you’re waiting too long. Putting it another way, the authors of the Challenger Customer write:

Sales Leaders: “What Does This Look Like?”

So, what does this look like in real life? For the sake of example, let’s say that you sell marketing automation software, and you’ve encountered a marketing department that wants to prove the ROI of their marketing efforts. In other words, they are in the “problem definition” stage, and they are moving to the solution identification stage.

How do you open a conversation with the marketing team? Hint: You don’t open the conversation by telling them about your software and how it’s different from all the other marketing automation providers. When you do that, you get buyers who actively ignore you. Remember this graph?

Yup, that’s what happens when you try to move too fast. In our hypothetical example, our buyers are looking into the different ways they can show the effectiveness of their marketing efforts. That may involve UTM tags in Google Analytics or their company’s CRM or marketing automation.

There are many paths to a solution, but as a sales rep for a marketing automation company, your job is to help point them in the direction of marketing automation (not necessarily your solution), which requires teaching buyers about marketing automation and explaining how marketing automation can solve a buyer’s problem.

Sure, you might sprinkle in a few details that only your solution can offer, but you don’t frame it in a pitchy way. For example, you wouldn’t say, “With marketing automation, you can do multi-touch revenue attribution, and only my marketing automation platform offers that capability.” They aren’t ready to evaluate platforms, but you can plant the seed that multi-touch revenue attribution is something they really need if they want to prove the ROI of their marketing programs.

Bottom Line: Your Opening Must Match the Buyer’s Purchase Stage

There are many ways to plant those seeds. You can do it through email, on the phone, by sharing content on social, etc. But you have to make sure that your conversations coincide with a buyer’s readiness. Otherwise, you’ll end up with confusion and annoyed buyers, and 2017 will look something like this:

If you’d like to understand how content fits into this process, check out this post: Why B2B Sales Teams Need to Change Their Content Strategies

With over 300,000,000 active professionals, LinkedIn is the perfect network for social selling. But are you using LinkedIn to its fullest potential?

You probably know the basics: how to post to a group, how to send and accept connection requests, how to fill out your profile… But LinkedIn is more powerful than that, especially when you uncover some of the little-known features of the platform.

To help you harness the power of LinkedIn for social selling, we’ve compiled a list of 12 tips and tricks. Read ahead and learn how to make the most of LinkedIn!

1. Add a Profile Photo

Okay, this is a pretty basic tip. But it is an important one. If you are going to use LinkedIn for prospecting, you need a picture.

Yes, LinkedIn is a professional network – not a dating site. But that does not mean that LinkedIn users do not look at profile pictures. When you look at heat maps that track where LinkedIn users gaze, you’ll see that users linger on your profile picture.

In fact, if you do post a picture, people are seven times more likely to click on your profile.

Keep in mind that your profile picture will be a square. The ideal size is between 200×200 pixels and 500×500 pixels.

2. Customize your LinkedIn URL

Do you want to look tech savvy and make your URL look more professional? Claim your own LinkedIn URL. When you sign up for LinkedIn, you are assigned a URL with a bunch of numbers.

But you can change those numbers by navigating here. On the right-hand side of the screen, you will see a link that says “Customize your public profile URL.” Click the link to get a URL that looks more like this: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markbajus

https://www.linkedin.com/in/markbajus is much easier to share than a bunch of numbers.

3. Link to Your Company’s Content in Your Profile

86% of B2B marketers are using content marketing. So, chances are good that your marketing team has an ample number of blog posts, white papers, e-books, and webinars for you to share.

Why don’t you link to those resources in your profile and gather some inbound leads for your marketing team?

For instance, let’s say that I want to add Trapit’s content curation workbook to my profile. First, I need to navigate to my profile and click the “edit” button.

Then, I have to navigate to the area where I would like to add the content curation workbook. I click on the rectangle with a plus sign.

There, I can link to the landing page.

4. Prospect Invisibly

Sometimes, you want to prospect invisibly. Perhaps you want to gather intel, and you’re not ready for your prospects to know that you’re looking at their profiles.

To browse invisibly, go to your settings. Click on your profile picture in the upper right-hand corner of the LinkedIn navigation bar. Then, pull down to “Privacy & Settings” and click “Review.”

Next, scroll down to “Select what others see when you’ve viewed their profile.” And choose “You will be totally anonymous.”

You’re in stealth mode.

5. Be Identifiable

When you are ready to connect with a prospect, follow the instructions in tip four. But change your settings to “Your name and your headline.” Then, view your prospects’ profiles.

By being identifiable and by viewing your prospects’ profiles, you subtly show your prospects that you are interested in them. If your prospects are active LinkedIn users, they will check to see who has viewed their profile and may connect with those people.

Which brings me to my next tip…

6. Check to See Who Has Viewed Your Profile

You never know where you might find your next business opportunity. It could be someone who was perusing your profile.

To check to see who has viewed your profile, click “Profile” in the top navigation bar and pull down to “Who’s Viewed Your Profile.”

You may find a treasure trove of names for prospecting. And in some cases, a profile view might be the “in” you’ve been waiting for.

Have you been trying to reach someone at Company XYZ? Oh, look at that! Someone from Company XYZ just looked at your profile!

For some tips on connecting with prospects, download our templates for breaking the ice on social media.

7. Save Your Prospecting Searches

Next to the main search bar, you’ll find a link to LinkedIn’s advanced search options. Click on it.

You will be taken to another page, where you can run people searches based on location, current companies, industry, school, etc. If you have LinkedIn premium, you can search based on seniority, company size, job function, years of experience, etc.

So, let’s say that I want to find CMOs in the Boston Area. I’d first type in “Boston” into the location section.

Next, I’d use my LinkedIn premium search options to find the CMOs.

To save my list of CMOs in the Boston Area, I navigate over to the upper right-hand corner of the search window.

Click on “Save Search” and fill out this form:

8. Ask for Warm Introductions

84% of B2B decision makers begin their buying process with a referral (Edelman Trust Barometer). LinkedIn makes referrals simple for salespeople. First, you choose a prospect. Next, you see how you are connected to that person. Finally, you ask a mutual connection for a referral.

So, let’s say that I wanted to target Trapit’s Tommy Ziemer, Trapit’s VP of Operations. First, I need to find him on LinkedIn.

Once I have located him, I look to see how I’m connected to Tommy on LinkedIn.

Next, I have to determine who will be the best referrer. Preferably, I want someone who knows me well and who has some sway. Of my options above, I’d probably choose Henry Nothhaft, the Co-Founder and Head of Products at Trapit.

Once I have chosen my referrer, I click on the upside down triangle to the right of the “Connect” button and pull down to “Get Introduced.”

Finally, I send Hank a message and ask for a referral. For sample messages, download our templates for breaking the ice on social media.

9. Join Groups to Send InMail to Prospects

But what happens if you don’t have an easy “in” with a prospect?

Don’t worry. You can still send the prospect a message – even if you do not have LinkedIn Premium. To do so, you will want to join a common group because LinkedIn allows group members to message one another.

Once you have found and joined a common group, navigate to the “Members” section of the group.

Next, find the member you want to connect with, and click “Send message.”

10. Set Reminders for Yourself

Once you have connected with someone, you will see a “Relationship” menu bar in their profile.

There, you will be able to add relationship notes – how you met, reminder notices, and other important ways to give context to your contacts.

Personally, I like the “reminder” notices. With them, you can set a reminder to follow-up with a prospect. If you choose the recurring option, you can program a reminder to call an individual every week, every month, every three months, every sixth months, or every year.

11. Share Educational Content with Your Network

Buyers are more willing to engage with you if you position yourself as a go-to resource of information. 92% of buyers engage with a professional on LinkedIn if the professional is a known thought leader.

To be a thought leader, you need to be helpful, and you need to stay on top of the latest industry news. We here at Trapit can help you find and share relevant, smart content that engages your audience.

To find out more about how Trapit works, click here.

12. Use @Mentions

In 2013, LinkedIn added @Mentions, which allow you to tag other companies and professionals in your posts. In other words, if you know how to use @Mentions on Twitter or Facebook, you can easily figure out LinkedIn’s @Mentions.

If you want another LinkedIn user or company to know that you are talking about them, include the “@” sign, immediately followed by the name of the user or company. The user or company will be alerted that you are talking about them.

This is a great way to engage with prospects after you’ve connected with them. Read something that your prospect wrote? Post the article and say, “Everyone needs to check out this great blog by @ProspectNameHere.”

Read something that your prospect would like to read? Post the article and ask, “I saw this article and thought of you, @ProspectNameHere. What are your thoughts?”

What did I miss?

There you have it: 12 tips and tricks for taking your LinkedIn social selling to the next level. I hope that they helped you.

Do you have any LinkedIn tips that you’d like to share? Share them in the comments section below. I’d love to read them and improve my LinkedIn knowledge, as well!

-Mark

Want more great tips about social media, social selling, and content marketing?

Subscribe to the Trapit blog, and we will send them to your inbox!

LinkedIn image via Nan Palmero on Flickr

When you’re starting a new project, identifying your key stakeholders can be challenging.

In project management lingo, the drivers are the people who define the trajectory of your project. They tell you what you should do. The supporters are the people who help you carry out the project. The observers are interested in your project, but they have little impact on the project’s outcome.

To help you identify these people, we’ve created a list of the key roles that you need to fill for your employee advocacy program. To keep the list short, we’ve focused on the key drivers and supporters.

Your executive champion is a person who holds a high position in your company. This person:

• is a visible and vocal supporter of your project
• advocates for your program in company meetings
• stands up for your project when disputes arise
• takes necessary actions to help ensure that your project is successful
• provides guidance and feedback when necessary

Level of Involvement:

If you’re planning on launching your employee advocacy pilot program, here’s the level of involvement that you should expect from your sponsor:

Envisioning the pilot: Heavy

Your executive champion will defend your pilot to the rest of the executive team. She may even be the initiator of the project. So, your sponsor’s feedback and expectations are important. Her input will influence the trajectory of the pilot.

Organizing and preparing: Moderate

Consult with the executive champion as you develop your plans. Make sure that she likes the direction of your project, and most importantly, have her sign off on your project plan.

Carrying out the pilot: Light to moderate

As you decide on a group of advocates, ensure that you introduce your advocates to your champion. Have your executive leadership explain why social media will help your advocates in a professional context. Hearing this message from a higher-up goes a long way.

Wrapping up the pilot: Heavy to moderate

This person has gone to bat for your project. She should know the results – the triumphs and the areas for improvement – so that she can take the information to other members of the executive team.

Your project manager will be busy, to say the least. This person is responsible for:

• Communicating the vision for the program to the key stakeholders
• Finding a platform
• Maintaining the project plan
• Providing status updates
• Holding team meetings
• Monitoring team morale
• Coordinating deliverables with the vendor’s customer success team

Level of Involvement:

It goes without saying that this person will be heavily involved throughout the project – from proposing the pilot program to wrapping it up.

Envisioning the pilot: Heavy

Organizing and preparing: Heavy

Carrying out the pilot: Moderate to heavy

Any respite will happen during the actual pilot – if you and your team have done a good job planning the project.

Wrapping up the pilot: Heavy

At this stage, the project manager has to:

• Determine whether the program met its objectives
• Re-evaluate the advocacy platform to see if it helped your team meet its goals
• Decide if and how the pilot program will expand to include more employees
• Work closely with the executive champion to determine the next steps
• Coordinate with the vendor’s customer success team to plan for the next phase

Your employees will need access to content. You’ll want a mix of both branded content and other people’s content. When it comes to branded content, someone will have to create the blog posts, infographics, and videos that your advocates will share.

Those people, of course, are your content creators. They:

• Write educational and entertaining thought leadership pieces, as well as product-focused content and customer success stories
• Are most likely part of your marketing team

Level of Involvement:

Your content creators do not have much sway over the scope of your project. Essentially, they are supporters who facilitate your project. As such, their level of involvement will look something like this:

Envisioning the pilot: Light

Your content creators need to know what your goals and objectives are so that they can create the right kind of content.

Organizing and preparing: Moderate

Content creation takes time. Give your content marketers a week or two to create content that matches your objectives and your advocates’ interests.

Carrying out the pilot: Moderate to heay

Your content team will continue to produce content during the pilot. The level of your content marketing team’s involvement depends on how much original content you want them to create.

Wrapping up the pilot: Light

Your content team will need feedback on the content that worked and the content that didn’t work. That way, your content crafters can be prepared for when you launch a full-scale program with more advocates.

As I mentioned above, you’ll want a mix of branded content and third-party content. It’s your curation team’s job to:

• Find third-party content that resonates with your advocates across departments
• Define topics and subtopics that your advocates and their followers care about
• Write sample headlines, which the employees can use or modify when sharing content on their social media networks

There are several ways to structure your content curation. See this post for three ideas.

Level of Involvement:

Like your content creators, your curators will be more involved during the planning stages and during the actual pilot.

Envisioning the pilot: Light

Organizing and preparing: Moderate

Your curators identify content themes that will be relevant to your target audiences. They need to start assembling a library of content for your team to share.

Carrying out the pilot: Heavy

During the pilot phase, your curators will be heavily involved. They will continuously find content and offer suggested copy to your employees. In addition, they should receive feedback from the analytics team about which messages and which types of content are working.

End of the pilot: Moderate

Your curation team should work closely with the analytics team to see what worked and what didn’t work.

We aren’t born with Twitter accounts. It’s something we have to learn, and some advocates will need more help than others. To assess your team’s needs, you will need a team of trainers to guide your advocates’ social media education.

Your trainers are responsible for:

• Assessing your advocates’ social media abilities
• Filling in any skills gaps
• Helping advocates identify their personal and professional goals
• Standardizing best practices across your company

Your trainers might be in your HR department. They could be part of your vendor’s customer success team. They might be on your social media marketing team. It will vary from company to company.

Level of Involvement:

Here’s the level of involvement that you can expect from your training team:

Envisioning the pilot: Light

Your trainers will need to understand your goals so that they can create the right training materials. But, in general, they won’t have much say in the trajectory of the project.

Organizing and preparing: Moderate

Once you’ve identified your core group of advocates, then, the trainers need to step in and identify the employees’ needs. The employees’ needs should serve as the basis for the training materials.

Creating a training program can take time. Make sure that you give the trainers enough time to plan their training sessions.

Carrying out the pilot: Moderate to heavy

During the pilot, your trainers may offer continued social media education. Furthermore, the trainers will be available to answer your team’s questions that bubble up as they become more involved on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest.

Wrapping up the pilot: Light

At the end of the pilot, your team should request feedback from the advocates. See where they felt adequately trained, and see where you need to bulk up your training program.

The advocates! We can’t forget about the advocates! Their responsibilities include:

• Being active on social media
• Representing your company well on social media
• Following your social media policy
• Developing their personal brand
• Standardizing best practices across your company

Need some ideas for recruiting advocates? We have you covered.

Level of Involvement:

Without advocates, you don’t have a pilot, and in many ways, you’re running this program to help your employees – not just your company.

That said, remember that you don’t want too many hands in the pie when you cook up your project plan. Ask for your advocates’ input, but leave the big decisions and project plan in the hands of your program manager and executive champion.

Envisioning the pilot: Light

You may want to speak to a few potential advocates before you launch the program. Ask them why they want to use social media for work. How has social media helped them meet their professional goals? What would motivate them to participate in this program?

Organizing and preparing: Light

Your trainers may give your employees a skills assessment while they are developing the training materials. The curators may want input on content topics that interest your advocates. But all in all, advocates’ involvement will be light at this point.

Carrying out the pilot: Moderate

During the pilot, your advocates will have two main tasks: enroll in training and be active on social media. Remind your advocates that their involvement is voluntary and that their social media use shouldn’t take a lot of time. If you select the right advocacy platform, your advocates’ participation should be easy.

Wrapping up the pilot: Light

At the end of the pilot, conduct exit interviews with your advocates. Find out what they enjoyed and identify areas for improvement.

Your employee advocacy program should have clear, quantifiable objectives. A number-savvy person will need to compile data so that you can see how your program is performing against your goals.

To fill this role, you may or may not need to involve another person. Many companies can fill the role by using people who are already involved with the project – perhaps your project manager or a content curator.

Level of Involvement:

Envisioning the pilot: Light

Your metrics folks will want to understand the objectives for the pilot.

Organizing and preparing: Light

During this phase, your data people will need to determine how they will track your program’s progress, and they will need to familiarize themselves with the reporting features in your advocacy platform.

Carrying out the pilot: Light to moderate

Your analysts will keep an eye on the data, and they will give real-time feedback to your team members. Are your advocates participating? Which types of content seem to be working?

Wrapping up the pilot: Light to moderate

At the end of the pilot, the metrics people will help your project manager and executive champion to gather strategic insights about the pilot program. Additionally, they may have ideas for the expansion of your program.

It’s easy to forget that you’re not alone. Your advocacy vendor should provide support for you and your team. Here’s what you can expect from your vendor’s customer success team:

• Helps with project planning
• Provides guidance for deployment
• Assists with technical migrations
• Helps with training
• Shares subject matter expertise

Level of Involvement:

Envisioning the pilot: Light

During this stage, you may not know your customer success team, as you may be selecting your vendor. But once you do select a vendor, get to know your CSM as soon as possible.

Organizing and preparing: Moderate

This is the point where the vendor’s customer success team will be of great use to you and your team. Your designated CSM should work closely with your project manager. He should help guide your project plan.

Carrying out the pilot: Moderate

Your customer success team should offer suggestions about optimizing your program, and they should help you troubleshoot any problems, be they technical glitches with the platform or general social media questions.

Wrapping up the pilot: Light to moderate

Your customer success team can help you devise ways to transition from a pilot program to a full-scale employee advocacy program.

Looking for more help launching your advocacy program?

Filling the key roles for an employee advocacy program is just one step in a much larger journey. Check out our ebook The Rise of the Employee Marketer. It’s dedicated to helping you plan and activate your social advocates in your company.

Good luck!

Posted byMark Bajus

Image via

The savvy marketing professional may remember April 23rd, 1985 – the day that The Coca-Cola Company announced that it was changing its venerable Coke formula that allegedly hadn’t been altered since 1886. The public outcry in response was so visceral and severe that Coca-Cola was forced to reverse their decision.

Remarkably, this issue even hit the courts: consumer groups actually challenged Coca-Cola’s right to control this brand, arguing that the original Coke was so imbedded in the culture that it was now part of the public domain.

So like Coca-Cola, companies spend significant time, energy, and expense developing their brand, defining their message, and establishing their identity to the public. But a lot has changed since 1985. So now in the course of brand-building, businesses create digital assets, including websites, blogs and of course social media, in an attempt to create a conversation about their brand.

But community conversations have a dark side. Digital and social assets become stale as the irrepressible flood of new content pushes messages further and further away from the top story, the latest post, or list of trending tweets. As this happens, control of the conversation that these companies worked to create shifts away from the entity and perhaps toward competitors. But even at the bottom of the pile, these assets can have value — a well-crafted message is timeless.

The challenge, then, lies in resurfacing these assets when and where they support and enhance the desired brand image, and thereby hopefully shaping the conversation.

The Impact of the Digital Revolution

It was not long ago that advertising, pushed to consumers in print and television, was the primary mechanism for propagating a message to the public. But with the emergence of the Internet, consumption has increasingly been replaced by creation, and push has given ground to pull.

This transition was no accident. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and hundreds more, are built for sharing content. Combined, blogs and social media dominate content on the Internet. At their root, blogs and social media represent a democratization of content and publishing, where a brand’s story is conveyed, but not necessarily by the company that owns the brand. Rather, the story is often told by consumers sharing what they like – or don’t like – about a particular company or brand.

The goal has shifted from passive saturation to active engagement and the brand campaign cycle has shortened dramatically. Whereas a print campaign might last for three months with a reach of 10 million consumers, a story on TechCrunch leaves the front page within six hours. As a result, the digital revolution has necessitated that successful brand management becomes an ongoing, active and extremely dynamic process.

A Brand’s Invisible Web

The shortened brand campaign cycle is a reflection of the shortened news and information cycle precipitated by the Internet. Content is now published, through news organization, blogs, and social media, in a steady and never-ending stream. But individuals can only pay attention to so much at once. Yesterday’s content is quickly forgotten for whatever is at the top of the stack today, only to be buried by what comes next.

This creates an “invisible web” of content — the content that still lives on the Internet but is hidden from view by virtue of being off of the front page and out of the limelight. A brand’s invisible web, then, consists of the sum of brand-relevant content on the web, both positive and negative, past and present. The invisible web for a brand is a 360-degree, archival view that represents the history of engagement and conversation about the brand in the public sphere, which can either be exploited by the brand owner, or by its competitors.

The challenge, then, is clear: whoever controls the invisible web controls the brand message.

Automated Curation & Personalization

The paradox facing brands today is that if they have executed their marketing strategy effectively, they have established a vibrant, ongoing conversation about their brand in the marketplace. However, by virtue of achieving that result, the amount of content about the brand that exists on the Internet makes it virtually impossible for a person – or even a small team – to manage this content flood.

Applying automated content discovery technology lets computers do what humans cannot — continuously scan the web for content related to a brand, allowing an entity to make full use of the invisible web. By tapping into the wealth of content that is relevant to a specific brand, a company has the opportunity to become an influencer – a thought leader – rather than just a shill for their own products and services.

Advanced content discovery tools like Trapit provide brand managers with the ability to automatically curate content relevant to their products or categories, reviving beneficial content from the invisible web and delivering it to the community when that content is most important.

Curate your brand’s content. If you don’t, someone else may do it for you.

-Gary

While face-to-face is the most effective medium for communication, distribution – and quality – are formidable barriers

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Whether it is entertainment, education, or simply communication, the closer the recipient of the message can get to the originator, the better the chances that the message will be received appropriately. In the first days of human civilization, communications were face-to-face – it was story-telling – great deeds or practical knowledge transmitted from one person to another – or a small group – in an intimate, personal, real-time setting. Effective, but hardly scalable. And, as anyone who’s ever played the “telephone game” knows, not very accurate past the first telling.

Enter the written word. These stories were first captured on stone tablets, and eventually on paper, mass-produced through the genius of movable type and printing presses. Scalable? You bet. And precise too. Yet, even in the hands of the most gifted writer, words on paper are cold, impersonal – sterile as compared to the emotion, the warmth – the passion – of the creator conveying their message in person. The theatre was a step in providing this missing personal touch, and raised the bar a bit on scalability, but not enough – especially as measured in the age of the Internet where billions of people are simultaneously approachable.

It was 1888 when the first film with a “motion picture camera” was produced. Of course, producing a “moving image” and solving the problem of distribution are hardly equal. That is, inventing the camera was a milestone, but the “projector” was still a ways off. And having a moving image solved a huge part of the recreation of a real-time, physical event, but synchronization with sound presented another problem – one that would take another three decades to solve. And then, there was also color.

Anyway, you get it. My purpose here is not to retell the history of Hollywood, but rather to establish the importance of conveying a personal experience in communicating effectively. As a species, humans have evolved from stories told around campfires to smart phones and software capable of producing integrated video and audio ten-times more powerful than what Academy Award-winning directors were using less than two decades ago. This has led to a proliferation of video content easily distributed and widely available on the Internet. But unlike our ancestors, we can now tap into countless campfires around the globe – from Chicago to Calcutta to Siberia. And through the power of video, capture that emotion – the passion – the nuance – of the creator of that message, whether it is a 30-second clip or a three-hour feature film.

But therein lies another problem. Billions of videos. YouTube reports that every minute, 100 hours of video are uploaded. From the historical Zapruder amateur video of the Kennedy assassination to the first men walking on the moon – to yet another of a million nonsensical clips of cats playing with yarn. Point is, I suspect that cat videos were not the hot topics around primeval campfires. To wit, it has been reported that 90% of all of the content that has been created since the beginning of time has been created in the past two years. But before you high-five in celebration of the “awesomeness” of this proliferation of content, consider this: does the guy/gal behind the iPhone clips of college boys farting at frat parties rate with the brilliance of Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Hemmingway, Steinbeck…? Quantity does not equal quality. So, while technology has solved the problem of scalability, it has created another problem: in this sea of content – video content specifically – how do you know where content that is actually relevant to you will exist? Faced with the prospect of joining a billion campfires around the world, how can you choose the one that really will matter to you? We’ve all heard “three hundred channels and nothing to watch.” Well, multiply that by another million or so – and you’ll get an appreciation for the problem we all face with scale vs. quality.

At Trapit, we understand this. We love video. We get the power of this media. We understand that 80% of all content – in bytes at least – on the Internet today is video. But we also understand that some high percentage of this – 70, 80, 90%? – is crap – at least for any given individual. Trapit can help. We have done the heavy lifting. We’ve culled the Internet. We’ve sifted the flotsam and jetsam from the trillions of gallons of the Internet oceans of content – text and video – that swim in this ocean. And we’ve identified only the top sites for original, quality video content. Over twenty thousand of these sources – and growing. No spam, no aggregators, no porn. No crap. And our customers can decide how they want to categorize this content – not only in the topics that are relevant to them – but the medium. Text, video, audio. Any of the above – or all of the above. Perhaps for one topic, our customer decides to share only video content with their constituents – or in another a combination of text and video. Trapit will give you the power to find that campfire that fits.

– Gary

When you think about developing an effective marketing strategy, you probably don’t think about talking to your shrink. However, perhaps surprisingly, the two are quite related. Both are focused on psychology and human behavior and how to adapt one’s choices to improve a situation. In therapy, this means you want to have your client feel less distress, and in business, this means you want to have your client continue to purchase your product. So, treating your client like a person is a good place to start.

Whether you’re of the Rogerian, Gestalt, or the Existentialism school of thought, there are cardinal rules when engaging with clients that could seriously improve your marketing strategy.

1. Build Rapport

In counseling, building rapport means developing a working relationship with the client. Someone isn’t going to spill his or her guts to a complete stranger on day one, so this process takes some nurturing. You must build trust and show your competency as a professional. Have conversations with the client and get to know them. Tell them a little bit about yourself and your process. Once they feel like they can talk to you, they’ll be more invested in your services.

In marketing, the exact same ideas apply. You must show your clients that your business is personal. You must set yourself apart from your competitors by demonstrating that you are competent, trustworthy, and will help them get what they need. Simple things like a personalized email, really great resources on your website, or social media posts that are tuned into what your audience is interested in are great ways to build rapport with prospective clients. (Carl Rogers would be proud.)

2. Set Goals

So you have a relationship, but now what? Setting goals is an imperative component of counseling. It provides focus, shows growth, and highlights common themes in a client’s life. Setting goals gets everyone on the same page; they are the compass on your journey.

When it comes to your marketing strategy, goals hold the same value. Developing short- and long-term goals will help you navigate your business relationship with your client and stay on top of their needs. When developing goals, they need to be concrete and direct. By understanding their needs, you can ensure that you are providing good service and that clients will keep coming back for more.

Who doesn’t like feeling cared for? Goal setting will do just this for your customers.

3. Active Listening

You know what your client is thinking, you’ve talked to them and you understand where they want to go. So, it is important to show you’re listening. Active listening is called active listening for a reason: you need to be active. Your clients trust you and you’ve developed really great goals. You’ve provided tools so that your client can start to attain these goals. However, you won’t be able to reach them if you passively let time go by without checking in to see how things are going. To do this, a therapist will use techniques like restating, paraphrasing, or the classic “How does that make you feel?”

In business, you can show you are actively listening by providing your clients or leads with content that is relevant to their goals. This doesn’t mean just giving them your service, but additionally giving them resources and information, so they can become smarter. When your client feels like he or she is being heard, he will feel supported and in turn, want to continue your relationship.

Structuring your marketing ideas around relationship building, understanding a client’s needs, and staying active are great tips to take from a psychologist. After all, they are experts in human behavior. Addressing client’s behaviors will attain everyone’s goal: more business.

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Have you analyzed the personalities of your customers? They’re a quirky bunch, aren’t they?

Some are gregarious. Others are quiet. Some are overly conscientious of their deadlines. Others couldn’t remember their deadlines even if the dates were tattooed on their bodies.

Over the years, you’ve learned to adjust your communication style to fit your buyer’s needs. Now, it’s time to take your knowledge and apply it to social media. In this post, we’ll look at different personality types that you might find on LinkedIn. You’ll find tips on tailoring your messages appropriately and curating the right content for different personalities.

What is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator?

The MBTI provides information on people’s personality preferences. Using four different dichotomies (e.g. introverts vs. extraverts), the test checks to see how you prefer to act in the world.

Granted, introverts can be extraverts in some situations, but the test seeks to understand an individual’s preferred way of dealing with life.

If you’d like to see the test in action, you can take a modified form the test here.

How can the MBTI help with social selling?

On LinkedIn, you have two primary modes of dealing with people:

1. Sending updates to all of your connections
2. Tailoring personalized messages to individual buyers and connections

When you’re sending messages to mass groups of people, understanding which personality types are more prevalent can be helpful. Using a chart (like the at the top of this post), you can hypothesize about the types of people who might see your post, and you can guess what types of content they’d like to read. (We’ll go over some examples below.)

The second mode requires you to abandon generalizations and think about your individual buyer. How does this specific person move through the world? And how can you tailor your messages and content to speak to one person’s personality? Thinking about Myers-Briggs types can help.

Speaking of which, let’s take a look at two of the test’s four dichotomies.

Sensing or Intuition

This image summarizes the difference best:

The intuitive types like to look at the big picture. They see connections and relationships between topics and concepts. They tend to favor abstract concepts.

The sensing types, on the other hand, tend to be more practical and literal. They tend to start at the beginning and then take a step-by-step approach to problems and situations.

Which type is more prevalent on LinkedIn?

According to the CPP’s research, it’s the intuitive type.

What does this mean for your content strategy and social selling?

When broadcasting status updates to your connections, you may want to focus on content that will resonate with intuitive people. You’ll want big picture topics (e.g. What is social selling?) or posts that draw unexpected connections between topics (e.g. How Social Selling Is Like Dating).

But what about sensing people?

Of course, you’ll find sensing types on LinkedIn, as well. When you come across a sensing type, you’ll want to have detailed content to share with them. For instance, make sure you have a few “how-to” articles at your fingertips. These kinds of posts will resonate well with the sensing type’s love of processes.

Thinking or Feeling

The thinking types tend to make decisions based on impersonal, objective logic. I’m sure that you’ve met these people before. They make lists of pros and cons for all their decisions.

Feelers, on the other hand, make decisions from their heart. This often leads them to make decisions based on what’s best for the people involved because they strive to create harmony.

Which type dominates LinkedIn?

The thinking types are more prevalent on LinkedIn, but they have only a slight edge. According to the CPP’s study, 38% of thinkers reported using LinkedIn regularly – only eight percentage points higher than the feelers.

What types of content will resonate with thinkers and feelers?

For the thinkers, you want facts and clear argumentation. For example, a slide deck that logically explain why social selling is necessary for your organization.

For the feelers, you’ll want a good story – one that tugs at the heart strings. All the better if that story can help your feelers create harmony in their organization. After all, harmony is what feelers strive for. For example, a post on sales and marketing alignment would be great for an audience of feelers.

To Sum Things Up…

You’ll encounter different types of buyers, with different personalities, on social media. When you interact with your buyers, it’s helpful to think about each person’s individual personality and needs. Try to match the type of content with the individual buyer’s personality.

The chart below is a starting point:

If you’ve found thinking about personality types to be helpful, share your success story in the comments section below!

-Mark

Want more tips on social selling?

We’ve got plenty:

Has your company adopted a social media policy?

Do your employees know what they can and cannot post?

In this blog post, you will learn how to create a stellar social media policy – one that meets legal requirements, as well as empowers your employees to be active on social media.

Let’s cut to the chase, shall we?

Why do you want your employees on social media?

As we have discussed on the Trapit blog before, salespeople on social media are more effective when they are active on social media. For example, 72.6% of salespeople who used social selling outperformed their peers in 2012.

However, social media does not simply have to be for your sales and marketing teams. All your employees can reach out to their social networks and amplify your brand’s messages. Did you know that…

• 41% of people believe that a company’s employees rank higher in public trust than a firm’s PR department, CEO or founder (2013 Edelman Trust Barometer)?

When done correctly, using your employees as brand advocates can be a cost-effective and low-risk form of marketing.

Why do you need a social media policy?

Arthur Kotsopoulos was a Vodafone employee in Sydney, Australia. In 2012, he took to his personal Twitter account, deriding the customers who walked into the Vodafone store.

His Twitter profile identified him as a “social media expert” and “ambassador” for Vodafone. While Vodafone maintained that Arthur was a “self-appointed” social media expert, people were still upset that a Vodafone was posting such offensive comments on Twitter.

As this story illustrates, there are real risks associated with having employees on social media. Sure, we’d like to think that none of our employees would write offensive tweets. But isn’t it better to have a policy – just in case something happens?

Quick fact:80% of companies have social media policies in place.

Step 1: Learn the laws

My guess is that most marketers do not have law degrees. Nevertheless, it is of the utmost importance that you familiarize yourself with both federal and state laws.

For instance, in the United States, read the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) laws. These laws stipulate that:

1. Employers cannot restrict employees’ right to use social media to address their working conditions (even if the employees are not in a union).
2. Employees cannot lie.
3. Employers can require employees to sign confidentiality agreements.

Some employers might be thinking to themselves, “Well, in order to empower my employees on social media, I want access to my employees’ usernames and passwords. That way, my company can modify any inappropriate or inaccurate posts.”

Not so fast! Several states prohibit employers from requesting employees’ usernames and passwords. These states include:

• Arkansas
• California
• Colorado
• Delaware
• Illinois
• Maine
• Maryland
• Michigan
• Nevada
• New Jersey
• New Mexico
• Oregon
• Utah
• Vermont
• Washington
• Wisconsin

The National Conference of State Legislatures has more details on these laws.

Quick tip: When in doubt, always seek professional legal advice. You don’t want to face fines for encroaching on your employees’ rights.

Step 2: Think about your company culture

Your social media policy should match the tone and tenor of your company. Consistency in both online and offline culture will enable your employees to easily assimilate your guidelines. Imagine what it would be like if you asked your employees to behave one way offline and another way online. How confusing!

To hone in on your company culture, write down a list of 5-7 adjectives that describe your business. If you’re stuck, try to answer the following question: Which of these adjectives describe your business?

Step 3: Determine the scope of your policy

Before you can write your policy, you must know what kind of policy you will have.

Will you write a blanket policy for all company employees on all networks?

Will you write separate policies for each network?

Will you write separate policies for each department?

If your social media policy leans towards the prescriptive and restrictive side, it might be wise to write a separate policy for your marketing department. That way, they have more wiggle room when they are doing their campaigns.

Step 4: Brainstorm rules and guidelines

Spend 20 minutes writing down potential rules and guidelines. Return to that list the next day and add new ideas that come to mind. Then, return to that list a week later and add any items that come to mind.

Don’t worry about editing the list just yet.

Sometimes, it is helpful to read other companies’ policies to generate ideas. You can find an extensive list of sample policies here.

To help you out, here are a few lines that you may want to consider including:

• Be honest about who you are. If the conversation relates to our business or our industry, you should identify yourself as working for Ford Motor Company in the content of your post/comment/other content… (Ford)
• Mind your manners. …Avoid posting materials or comments that may be seen as offensive, demeaning, inappropriate, threatening, or abusive… (Ford).
• Don’t forget your day job. You should make sure that your online activities do not interfere with performing your job responsibilities or commitments to customers (IBM).
• Did you screw up? If you make a mistake, admit it. Be upfront and be quick with your correction. If you’re posting to a blog, you may choose to modify an earlier post—just make it clear that you have done so. (Intel)
• Don’t tell secrets: Never reveal Intel-classified or confidential information. If you’re unsure, check with Intel PR or Global Communications Group. Off-limit topics include: litigation, non-published financials, and unreleased product info. Also, please respect brand, trademark, copyright, fair use, and trade secrets. If it gives you pause…pause rather than publish. (Intel)

Step 5: Refine and organize your ideas

Okay, you have a list of every possible rule or guideline that you could fathom including. Now, it’s time to refine your list.

Step 5a: Narrow down your ideas

Look for anything that seems redundant, try to eliminate or combine any weaker ideas, and prioritize the remaining items on the list.

Remember that your employees will not read a 5-page, single-spaced document in 10-point font. So, keep it on the shorter side.

Step 5b: Determine how you will present the information

Think about how you want to present the information to your employees. If you write dense paragraphs, it might be more difficult for employees to digest the content. For example, take a look at a paragraph from Cisco’s social media policy:

And now compare that to part of Intel’s social media policy:

Be honest: Which document are your employees more likely to read?

Step 6: Train your employees

Distributing a document does not mean that your employees will read it and understand it. After you create your social media policy, you will need to train your employees on social media best practices.

To help your employees understand your expectations, look at some sample content on social media. Have your workforce explain why a certain tweet is acceptable or why a certain Facebook post is unacceptable – according to your company’s social media policy.

For bad examples, you can use the Arthur Kotsopoulos example from above, as well as some examples from these articles:

• 10 People Who Lost Their Jobs over Social Media Mistakes (Mashable)
• The Worst Social Media Blunders of 2013 (New York Post)

Step 7: Implement your policy

Once you have your policy written and your employees trained, it is time to implement your policy. Before you can celebrate, you have two more items on your to-do list:

You have to determine who will enforce the social media policy. If you have a legal team, it might make sense for them to do it. If not, will it be marketing’s responsibility? HR’s?

You have to determine how you will encourage your employees to follow the rules. What disciplinary actions need to take place if a team member violates the policy? Will you incentivize participation and good behavior?

Okay, now, you are ready to celebrate!

Best of luck!

With this seven-step process, you’ll be on your way to empowering your employees and avoiding any legal ramifications.

If you’d like to share your company’s policy, leave it in the comments section below! I’d love to read it.

-Mark

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Image source:Emilie Ogez

How much do sales organizations dislike marketing organizations and vice versa? Short answer: A lot. Of the terms that sales and marketing use to describe each other, 87% of them are negative.

If your social selling program is going to take off, sales and marketing organizations need to set aside their differences. Social selling programs need alignment between marketing and sales teams.

To facilitate an agreement, consider drafting a sevice level agreement (SLA) between the two teams. Through an SLA, you’ll be able to set clear expectations for your teams.

What Is an SLA?

An SLA is an agreement between two parties. It establishes clear expectations about what services will be rendered between the parties. Perhaps you’ve seen an SLA from a technology vendor. In that document, the vendor typically sets expectations about uptime and customer service response times.

But SLAs aren’t solely for tech providers anymore. More and more marketing and sales organizations are adopting SLAs. Typically, these SLAs focus on the number of leads marketing will provide, definitions of an MQL, and how sales will follow up on MQLs.

Below, you’ll find a slightly different species of SLA. Instead of focusing on lead quantity and definitions, this SLA will focus on the sales team’s efforts on social media. Specifically, we’ll look at the four key sections you should include in your social selling service level agreement.

Goals

Before you launch a social selling program, you need to agree on the goals of the program. Why are you encouraging your sales team to be on social media? What do you hope to accomplish?

Putting your goals and objectives in writing will not only provide clarity for the rest of the SLA. These goals will act as guardrails, ensuring that both sales and marketing stay on track as they work together.

Not sure what your goals are? Here are a few ideas:

1. Prospecting – Identify new prospects and break the ice with them. When many people discuss social selling, they’re thinking in terms of prospecting.

2. Nurturing prospects already in your CRM – Chances are good that your marketing team has an e-mail nurturing program for prospects. But perhaps your company wants a more personalized touchpoint on social media. Perhaps you want salespeople to share content with their sales qualified leads on LinkedIn and Twitter.

3. Staying in contact with current customers – 80% of your future revenue will come from 20% of your existing customers (Gartner). It wouldn’t hurt to stay in touch with them, would it?

Parties/Governance

With social selling, there are many moving parts. Keeping track of who’s in charge can be tricky. So, use the agreement to name your primary stakeholders. You may want to flag the following roles:

1. Your executive sponsor
2. Your program manager from sales
3. Your program manager from marketing
4. Your content creators
5. Your content curators
6. Your trainers

To facilitate communication, indicate how and when salespeople should contact each stakeholder. For example, you don’t want your your account executives e-mailing your executive sponsor, asking for Twitter best practices.

The Responsibilities of Marketing

In most businesses, the marketing team will have two main responsibilities:

1. Provide content and sample messaging to the sales team
2. Provide training on social media

Given those responsibilities, marketing’s side of your SLA should include items like these:

The Responsibilities of Sales

Your marketing team plays a supporting role in social selling. Your salespeople are the ones who have to carry out the tactics, and they bear the bulk of the responsibilities.

Here are a few examples of agreements that your sales team could fulfill:

Final Thoughts

Above, we’ve outlined the four sections that every social selling SLA should include. Keep in mind that the content of those sections will vary from company to company. Using your company’s social selling goals, adjust the examples above.

As your program matures and grows, don’t forget to revisit this SLA. You may have to adjust it on a monthly or quarterly basis.

And finally, whatever you do, make sure that you communicate and celebrate your company’s achievements – both on the sales and marketing side of things.

Good luck!

-Mark

Want to Learn More about Creating a Social Selling Strategy?

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